The Opposite of Sibling Rivalry
by Troll Princess
Summary: Ronny Drake arrives at Xavier's school for more than just to see his brother.


Title: The Opposite of Sibling Rivalry  
  
Author: Troll Princess  
  
Rating: R, for language.  
  
Spoilers: Movieverse. X2.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, Marvel or 20th Century Fox or whoever owns 'em. Me ... I just take 'em out and play with 'em once in a while because I can't afford real action figures. And besides, these are cuter. And lifesize. And more apt to cause plot-advancing property damage.  
  
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The Opposite of Sibling Rivalry  
  
by Troll Princess  
  
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... and I've been staring at the stupid doorbell for what's got to be fifteen minutes, like if I focus on it long enough I'll suddenly develop telekinesis or something and get the damn thing to ring on its own. And I can't help but smile bitterly at that, because two weeks every day after school in the library will teach you big words like telepathy and pyrotic and feral telekinetic that they never bother you to even come within a fifty-foot radius of in your average snooty prep school.   
  
Shit, I don't even know why I'm here.   
  
Okay, that sounds beyond idiotic. It's not like I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, my arms encased in long sleeves in ninety-degree weather and my hands stuffed into my pockets as if someone's going to run up out of nowhere and try to force a polite handshake somewhere in between a crack in my concentration. And I can't take the risk, can't see what happened to my best friend all over again.  
  
I shake the image of Jake from my head with a tense jerk, like if I do it hard enough, grainy photographs are going to fall out of my ears or something. Accusatory color candids of the iridescent flames that swept over Jake's body in a fiery cascade that started at our joined hands. Black and white shots of his body disintegrating before my eyes, tan-gray dust that twisted in the breeze and sent an icy chill down my back. And all I can think of every time I picture what was left of my best friend drifting away on the wind are the pictures of that wild-eyed jerk on the news three months ago, that creepy fucking smile on his face as flaming police cars rose and fell on a tidal wave of fire and heat.  
  
Not Bobby. Can't think of Bobby, because thinking of Bobby makes me think I can handle this on my own and I'm not stupid enough not to keep that psycho's crazy expression locked firmly in my head.  
  
Aw, hell.  
  
I wince, shifting my knapsack awkwardly on my shoulder, the weight of my worldly possessions probably leaving red strap marks on the top of my arm. They have to know I'm out here, because if one of them can blow up police cars with a cigarette lighter and one of them can get shot in the head and walk away and one of them can make fucking ice sculptures on the spur of the moment, there's got to be someone in this place with the mutant ability to know someone's standing at the goddamn front door.  
  
But no one answers, and maybe there's a part of me that's happy for that much, that they're letting me stand there on my own terms and stare at the door. That somewhere inside there, someone knows the heavy weight of fever and sweat that sweeps over me at the mere thought of a handshake anymore. Can't play soccer or basketball with the guys anymore, because someone's going to want a high-five or to smack hands at some point. Can't go to the 'rents fancy country-club parties anymore, because God forbid someone new actually shows up that they expect me to get introduced to.  
  
You know Ronny, right? Our son.  
  
No, not the one on the news. He's ... he's off at school now.  
  
Yeah, it's a special school, all right. They train the mutant right out of them.  
  
Yeah, no shit.  
  
I can't help but scowl at that, because about three months after Bobby left for school the first time, Jake vanished and I started wearing leather motorcycle gloves for four months straight and nobody fucking bothered to ask why. A phase, probably. You know how kids these days are.  
  
Well, except for Bobby. Bobby asked. At the time, I hadn't known about ... you know. About him. I'd just told him to mind his own fucking business and stomped off to my room, slamming the door behind me. Spoiled second kid, perfect older brother ... if they didn't get a tantrum of me at least once a week, they dragged me to the pediatrician to ask what the hell was wrong with me now.  
  
See, you think I'm joking.  
  
If I'd have known ...   
  
God, I can't even think about what I would have said to him. It's impossible to think, with my father's angry, frustrated voice in one ear and the imagined echoes of my mother's exhausted tears in the other. Picturing them back at home right now ... hell, picturing them three months ago as we stared out my bedroom window, with Bobby watching us and silently making his choice as Mom clung desperately to me and I clung desperately to the last shred of control before I did something to my parents that would put the exploding police cars to shame.  
  
And my gaze drifts to my hand even as I shift my weight from foot to foot, disappearing into the nighttime shadows of the huge, cavernous porch overhang for a split second. Marley's got chains, man, and I've got that goddamn phone. I can still feel the weight of it in my hand, chilling and compact, all of my overactive fears stuffed into a Verizon wireless and a mental flash that I didn't even want to think of. A visual that flickered out of the part of my brain I'd been trying to ignore for ages, the part that wasn't all that surprised by lottery numbers or Celtics scores anymore, the part that heard a 'snikt' before we walked into that kitchen and screamed at me that 'Professor Logan' had metal claws in his hand.  
  
I called out of fear, all right?  
  
Fear that they were going to hurt my parents, maybe.  
  
Fear that they were dangerous, possibly.  
  
Fear that they were like me, and that's why they'd shown up at my house. Because Bobby had finally scraped together ten bucks and bought himself a clue and figured out why the hell ever since Jake vanished (or ran away, or got abducted, or whatever lie I'd told his parents), after about thirty seconds or so, I'd wrench myself out of people's grasps and make a run for it.   
  
I shake it off -- the all-encompassing terror, the morbid anxiety racing through me at what I'm about to do -- and turn back to the door, trying to imagine what happens next. The door opens on Professor Logan, claws extended and a bleeding bullet hole quickly closing on his forehead. The door opens on that psycho kid, a frightening smile twisting his lips as he flicks open the Zippo and sends a rippling ball of flame racing towards my head. The door opens on Bobby, this look of disappointment on his face that hurts more than the claws, hits harder than the ball of flames.  
  
I reach for the doorbell, and suddenly the door opens on the girl, white-banged and laughing and gloved, and my last tenuous grip on my control races away in the face of someone so beautiful, so normal-looking, so casually a *mutant*.  
  
And all I can think is, "Oh, God, don't touch me. Bobby's going to kill me if you touch me and ..."  
  
Another flick of the head. If only doing that actually tossed out a vision or two every once in a while, I might not be so fucking jumpy all the time, you know that?  
  
It's easy to figure out I'm catching her in mid-conversation, or maybe in mid-leaving, because she's turned away and yelling over her shoulder with that dark sweep of silky hair draped over her jean jacket, and she's saying, "-- damned if I know, Kurt. He probably forgot his key again ..."   
  
She turns her head in my direction, probably expecting a pile of muscles and bad hair in a white T-shirt and jeans or a pyromaniac in a worn long-sleeved T-shirt and taxi-print slip-ons or my perfect non-toxic big brother, and her voice dies off as recognition dawns in her brown eyes. "You," she says, and I spot the suspicion I was expecting to see right here and right now from the instant three days ago when I tossed all of my stuff into the nearest bookbag, grabbed my bank book, and made a run for it.  
  
Ever since my mother made a grab for my hand when I wasn't expecting it, and landed a second later on the other side of the floor, wondering why the only son she had left had shoved her away even as the pain of the third-degree burn on her palm struck her hard.  
  
"Yeah, me," I say, squirming under her confused gaze and making sure my hands are stuffed firmly in my pockets. "Is he here?"  
  
She stares at me for a long moment in time, brow furrowed and still too gorgeous to be dating Bobby (or maybe just gorgeous enough, knowing him), and it's like she's trying to figure out what I'm getting at with this "he" shit. And suddenly it hits her, and she glances over her shoulder as if she isn't even sure she should be doing this. "Bobby," she calls out, the hint of a Southern accent not helping with that control thing any. "Someone's here to see you."  
  
From somewhere off in the mansion, the roar of a TV crowd and the whistles and cheers of a real one rise up before I hear that familiar voice, and the hair on the back of my neck rises up even as some semblance of control over my powers dances vaguely out of my reach.  
  
"Oh, yeah?" he says, his voice growing louder. "Please tell me that someone comes bearing pepperoni pizza."  
  
He jogs into the foyer, and our eyes meet over the head of that adorable little mutant he's dating, at his fancy mutant school with his oh-so-loyal mutant friends. And he freezes, as a part of me laughs and thinks about how I didn't intend the pun, and he watches me the same way a SWAT leader would stare at a terrorist holding a pregnant woman hostage in his arms. "Ronny," he says in a harsh whisper. "What are you doing here?"   
  
"I --"  
  
What *am* I doing here?  
  
Hey, Bobby, thought I'd come for a weekend visit. On Tuesday.   
  
Hi, Bobby. Mom and Dad decided that I should see what it was like living with mutants for a while, because they're forgiving you and adopting a dozen mutant refugees, while they're at it.   
  
Say, Bobby, good to see you. Did you know I almost set Mom on fire last week just by touching her? Don't look at me like that. You know, if she would have laid off all that arguing over eating my fucking broccoli ...   
  
"I ran away from home."  
  
That sucks. The answers in my head sounded so much funnier and tension-breaking.  
  
Bobby and the girlfriend exchange this "look," this "Is he saying what I think he's saying?" look, and I can't keep from getting irritated when I see it. That tendril of control I'd thought I'd grabbed onto slips out of my hand as my jaw clenches. "Look, if you don't want me here --"  
  
"No!" Bobby blurts out, and for a second, I have to think he means it, that he doesn't want me here at all. But then he adds, "I do. It's just ... Ronny, what happened?"  
  
I open my mouth to say something, to talk of disintegrating friends and motorcycle gloves and mothers who sit at home popping pain pills like they're going to make the memories of lost sons vanish along with the hurt. But my voice has suddenly made a run for it, and my jaw slams shut, and I shake my head in a silent request for no questions.  
  
He nods uneasily at that, understanding dawning in his eyes, then leans over to whisper something to the girlfriend. She nods, too, then gives me a far-too-warm smile for the shit I've pulled on them in the past and stalks off towards the sounds of others.   
  
I'm so distracted by the sight of her walking away -- hey, I'm a teenager, all right? -- that I don't notice his hand until it's too close, the icy chill rising from it waking me with a startled flinch from my daydreams. And I pull away, too fast, too deliberate, and Bobby's accusatory glance pierces a part of me that I thought had died away not long before he'd shown up on our doorstep with mutants at his heels and ice in his veins.  
  
"Here, let me take --  
  
"Don't touch me," I say sharply, then feel guilt wash over me at the look on his face. I scowl and let the bag slip off my shoulder, then hold it out towards Bobby. "Trust me, now's not a good time to touch me."  
  
He doesn't say anything, just reaches out and takes the knapsack by the upper handle. My hand's got it by the top of one of the straps, and there's this moment, that probably lasts a millisecond but feels as if it drags on for an eternity, where our gazes lock as the freezing cold air rising from his skin and the excess heat rising from mine mingle and clash, a silent war of unrestrained power that I'd never bother to let anywhere near him in years. Too busy being the pissy, spoiled younger brother, too busy avoiding him like a bad case of SARS because everybody knows that Ronny Drake's so jealous of his too-good-to-be-true older brother Bobby that he can't stand to be anywhere near him.  
  
Sympathy flickers briefly in his gaze, memories locking into place and making painful connections behind those icy blue eyes he got from Dad. And he shifts the bag onto his own shoulder, then turns and cocks his head towards the slowly quieting voices deeper inside the mansion.  
  
"You coming?" he says, watching me.  
  
But I'm not looking at him this time, too focused on watching the long strips of wood where the porch met the doorway and turned into a school for society's throwaways. For mutants.  
  
For people like me.  
  
Swallowing hard, I nod and take a step forward, just a little bit shocked that I don't pass through some weird force field, that I don't suddenly end up in another dimension or something. And my control, that control over my powers that I've tried so hard to gather the strength to hang onto ever since Jake, returns with a vengeance as my fear begins to fall away.   
  
Onwards and upwards with my new existence, right?  
  
Right.  
  
Sure. 


End file.
